


heart's against my chest, lips pressed to my neck

by giucorreias



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5 + 1, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giucorreias/pseuds/giucorreias
Summary: Three things Tony knows: The Earth is round. The sky is blue. James Rhodes is straight.Or: a love story in six kisses.





	1. i'm falling for your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to write this fic until today ahahaha ops. Well, it's all planned out, just gotta write it up. I'll try to finish it up by the end of the week, let's see if i'll be able to.
> 
> Anyway! This is for panelinha's birthday! It was a challenge in which we used themes from other delipas, and mine was the trope official kiss. I've been meaning to write a Rhodes/Tony forever, and here it is! 
> 
> It's not actually angsty, just really emotionally charged, as every scene has a bunch of pain :T not my fault this characters suffer so much in canon (though this isn't really canon, I think). Anyway! This hasn't been beta read or even revised, I literally just wrote it. Hope you guys like it anyway.

Tony hasn’t ever come out to anyone. Not his parents—though he’s sure his mom has at least an inkling and wishes wholeheartedly it isn’t the truth (it’s less that she’s a homophobe and more that she thinks him not being straight will make life harder for when he has to run the Stark Industries)—and not Jarvis either, so he has no idea how to go about doing it. He wishes it was as simple as saying “I’m gay”, but even though the university is a great place to be himself and experiment, it isn’t a guarantee that everybody he meets is going to be open-minded about it.

He wouldn’t actually care if the person he’s planning to come out to wasn’t so important to him, wasn’t his best friend. It’s not that he’s afraid Rhodey will tell the press—that isn’t actually a concern, he’s sure his father would be able to throw money at the journalists until they gave up on writing about it and  _ maybe that way he’d even remember his son exists outside of his will _ —, and it isn’t even that he’s afraid Rhodey is gonna be an asshole, because Rhodey is actually a great guy for someone who wants to go to the army.  

He’s just… he’s nervous, is all.

Specially because Rhodey is currently sitting in front of him, arms crossed and a frown on his face, patiently waiting in silence ever since Tony told him he had something important to say—and Tony  _ has _ tried saying it, one or two or five times ever since they sat, but the sounds seem to get stuck on his vocal cords and he keeps opening and closing his mouth like a fish. Tony can  _ see _ that Rhodey’s getting frustrated, on the way he’s twitching and looking around and trying to be supportive even though he should be asleep by now so he isn’t dead on his morning classes.

He doesn’t want Rhodey to go to sleep and ignore what he has to say. He doesn’t want to lose his nerve and pretend this conversation never happened. He takes a deep breath, then, lets go of the hem of his shirt and blurts:

“I like men.” His voice sounds foreign to his own ears, and fuck if he doesn’t wish he could take it back for a second—he can’t. Rhodey blinks, though, and he neither gets up nor sneers, he doesn’t laugh, so as far as worst case scenarios go he thinks he avoided them all (there was a list, in his head. There is, still. On the seconds it takes Rhodey to react he comes up with another three, then discards them).

Rhodey raises his eyebrow on a face Tony’s come to learn means  _ cut the crap, Tones _ . When Tony’s hand goes back to the hem of his shirt and Tony neither takes it back nor starts laughing, when it gets clearer and clearer that Tony’s trusted Rhodey with something big, something that could potentially make his life very hard in case it got out (no matter how flippant Tony might try to act even to himself), then the eyebrow goes away and the frown comes back. It’s more thoughtful, this time, and less frustrated.

Rhodey asks: “How do you know you like men if you’ve never kissed one?”

And Tony thinks about saying  _ how do you know I’ve never kissed one _ , but that would bring the eyebrow back and divert the conversation, because Tony hasn’t ever kissed a man and they both know that. His manwhore façade is just that—a façade—, and Tony knows that Rhodey’s realized that not two weeks into their friendship, when Tony used the quotes of a book to describe a kiss he’d had the week before and Rhodey recognized it, word for word (the absolute  _ nerd _ ).

He fights the frustration, then, and the fondness for this man that’s watching him carefully, but still close enough to touch—who doesn’t seem wary or disgusted or angry, just confused. Who accepted the awkward teen for what he was and not what he pretended to be, what he had—who took him under his wing even though he couldn’t actually offer anything back. Tony considers two other responses in half a second before discarding them, and finally settles on a “How do  _ you _ know you don’t like men if you’ve never kissed one?”

To be quite honest, Tony expects Rhodey to laugh and affirm his straightness, to say  _ I just do _ , so Tony can nod and say  _ I rest my case _ , a smirk and a wide gesture with his hands as they both agree that things are what things are and neither of them will ever change. Rhodey’s silent, though, he’s still frowning and thoughtful and Tony… Tony wonders.

So he says: “I’m about to do something that might make you slap me,” and telegraphs his movements very obviously as he leans into his best friend. Rhodey keeps his eyes open, he looks at him, and he doesn’t move away. They kiss and it’s soft, chaste, sweet. Tony closes his eyes because his heart’s beating too fast and he isn’t sure he wants to look into Rhodey’s eyes or this’ll be too intimate. It ends slowly, as slowly as it started, and Tony has to force himself not to chase Rhodey’s warmth away because this isn’t  _ that kind _ of kiss.

Rhodey says “Now I’m sure,” and his voice is a murmur. Tony hears it clearly, because they’re still close. One of Rhodey’s hands is on his shoulder, the other resting on his neck, and Tony doesn’t actually want them to move. Tony blinks, dazed. His lips are tingling. His heart is still hammering against his ribcage. His own hands are holding Rhodey’s face, delicately. He answers “Me, too,” and he thinks  _ shit _ .


	2. settle down with me, cover me up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard and Maria are dead. Rhodey's a comfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say it was angst, so I won't apologize. This chapter deals with Tony's grief on losing his parents, so it's quite sad. Rhodey only shows up towards the ending. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't agree with Tony's views on the military and a bunch of other stuff, but I think it'd make sense for him to believe he was doing something good by building weapons for his country. I just felt like saying that: Tony's views of reality are not the same as mine. 
> 
> Anyway!! This was so, so hard to write, but it's finally done, and I quite liked the result, so here it is!

They’re  _ gone _ . The words keep looping inside his brain and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop them anytime soon. They’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone. Tony thinks:  _ Yesterday I told my father Captain America was stupid and I’ll never get to apologize _ . He thinks:  _ It’s been years since I last told my mother I loved her and she’ll never get to hear it again _ . He thinks:  _ I’m alone, now _ .

He wears red and blue and white to the funeral, instead of black. He thinks his father would have approved it, after they fought about his carelessness regarding the way the public would see his statement—and he can picture the argument in his head, the words he’d say, the inflections on Howard's voice as he told him that Tony would never be a respectable man, but that he should strive to try everyday for their legacy. Tony hadn’t cared about their legacy, it had never been about him. 

It is about him, now.

He’s seen the articles about their deaths. People wonder what will happen with the Stark Industries now that there is no longer a genius brain behind the engineering team—they have always underestimated Tony like that—, and people wonder what this means for the efforts of war, if the US is going to lose grounds. There are no condolences, not from the press. 

There are no condolences from the SI suits, either: they sneer at his clothes as if the color is more important than his tear-stained cheeks. They look at the bodies with a critical eye, just to check if it’s true and the Starks are really dead, just to say that they did it. They ask him what to expect from the future, what is he planning to do with his fortune.

Tony doesn’t know.  _ He doesn’t know _ . The day before, his only worry had been how to hide the bottles of vodka from his mother’s critical eye. Today, the jobs of thousands of people, the name of his father  _ and _ the lives of the american soldiers fighting for freedom  depend on the choices he makes.

Obadiah—Obie, as Tony has always called him to his face just to sound irreverent, just because he could—touches his shoulders comfortingly. Tony looks up at him, big lashes still wet with tears, and tries to look strong. He doesn’t think it works very well—the tears keep welling up, and whenever he tries to speak his voice comes out wrong (or not at all).

“It’s ok, kid,” Obie says, and Tony doesn’t even have the strength to complain about being called a kid—he’s never felt younger or more adrift. “You just lost your parents. You don’t have to be strong.”

Tony remembers, then, that Obadiah had lost his father right before he had to sell his company just to stay afloat. Somehow that makes him feel better, feel less alone. It’s good to know that someone understands what he’s going through, to a degree. It’s good to remember that life will keep going and he will keep going, too. Tony sniffs once, twice, gets a grip of himself and manages to spend the rest of the funeral without shedding another tear, Obie (and now the nickname sounds fonder in his head, instead of irreverent) a comforting presence on his back.

Later, when he’s back to the empty mansion he used to share with his parents (and the house has never seemed emptier, bigger) it catches up to him. He digs up the vodka bottles he had hidden—trying not to think of his mother and failing—, places them one beside the other on the coffee table in the living room, then starts drinking them all, one by one.  

Rhodey arrives as he’s on the floor, feet propped up on the sofa (he can do it now that his mother isn’t there to complain, and to his drunk self it makes sense to take advantage of the fact that she’s dead. He’ll feel bad about that when he’s sober again), empty bottles littering the floor around him. He’s looking intently at the one that’s just beyond his reach, wondering if he wants it enough to move in order to get it.

He hears footsteps and his first thought is that he should leave before his mother- and then he remembers. He forces himself not to cry and moves his head towards the sound. He recognizes these shoes, these legs, this shirt. His best friend looks at him with big eyes full of worry, pushes the bottle away with his foot and then sits beside him, holds his hand.

“I thought you were busy getting shot at,” Tony says. He tries to muster a smile, but can’t. Rhodey’s hands are warm and his presence makes him feel less numb, somehow. “Why are you here?”

“Why do you think I’m here, genius?” Rhodey gets up, still holding Tony’s hand, then uses it to pull him. Tony stumbles, dizzy, and uses Rhodey’s body to support himself. “I’m sorry I was too late for the funeral.”

“It’s alright,” he answers. “I wish I had been late too. I wish I didn’t go. I wish-” he stops himself. He wishes they were alive. After all those fights he had with his father, his parents, he wishes they were still alive. Rhodey doesn’t answer, he just starts walking, and Tony has no choice but to follow him. He buries his face on Rhodey’s chest and lets him lead the way—he doesn’t want to see the door to his parents room and think about how it’ll be empty from them on, so he thinks about Rhodey’s muscles instead, up until the time Rhodey stops them to open the door to Tony’s own room.

His room is a mess—he’d messed it up as he searched for his alcohol—, but he doesn’t see that, now: he sees his own drool on Rhodey’s shirt, the bags under his eyes that show Rhodey hasn’t been sleeping properly, the way the military haircut complements his face in a way that his previous haircut didn’t. 

Rhodey pushes him, not without gentleness, and then he’s on the bed.

Tony thinks about making a lewd comment, something about the both of them in a bed, but he’s a bit too tired for that. Rhodey takes off his shoes, his socks, helps him out of his pants. This is somehow a familiar ritual—it isn’t the first time Rhodey takes care of his drunk ass. This is probably not going to be the last. 

Rhodey tucks him in, turns off the lights, opens the door.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Tony tells him. He isn’t above begging. He wouldn’t be, even sober. “Please, Rhodey.”

Instead of answering, Rhodey sighs. Tony knows what that means, and doesn’t even need to listen as Rhodey says: “I’ll be back.”

Tony turns once, twice, three times, trying to find a comfortable position. He ends up belly up, an arm over his eyes, the other beside his body, above the covers. He feels the minutes trickle by, one by one, and by the time Rhodey comes back—Tony hears the door open, then feels the mattress dip—he’s almost asleep. There’s the weight of an arm slung over his body, the warmth of a breath against his neck.

He feels the touch of something soft at the corner of his lips, there and gone, and by the time his brain registers what it is, he’s too close to sleep to say anything. He thinks  _ I’ll mention it in the morning _ , but when he wakes up—skin touching and limbs tangled—he doesn’t remember it anymore, he thinks maybe it was a dream.  

Rhodey yawns. He says: “I’ll make us breakfast,” and Tony feels the swoop on his stomach he’s come to associate with his best friend’s presence. Against all odds, Tony smiles.


	3. and hold me in your arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afghanistan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, like, I was procrastinating watching iron man 1 because the movie makes me sad, but I needed to watch it in order to get this right so... yeah. Watched it today, finished it pretty quickly. I hope the other chapters will come soon, but no promises.

Tony’s thirsty and hungry, tired and in pain. The alien presence of something _in_ his chest is a constant reminder of just how precarious is his situation, plus the way he can’t move without being mindful of it makes him think that his life from now on will be irrevocably changed.

If he survives.

He thinks he might not, he thinks he might die—and he doesn’t want to, but he might not have any choice. He has no doubt that Stark Industries’ considerable assets are being used to try and locate him, but he’s never been much of a good boy, not even when it’d be in his best interests, so he isn’t going to sit tight and wait to be found.

His hands hover over the dismantled pieces of his own weapons and he doesn’t even need the plans he made to see it in his mind, his own body wrapped in metal like a modern-day knight. If he’s lucky, it’ll be enough to save their lives. If he’s smart about it, it might even be enough to destroy this terrorist base.

He sees it in Yinsen’s eyes, the same desire for revenge he feels burning in his own veins. He wonders who the terrorists killed to get him to feel such anger, and is actually really glad to find it wasn’t his family. Now that Rhodey’s gone, Tony doesn’t have anyone to go back to—it’s nice that at least one of them does.

He thinks about Rhodey often—and he tries not to let himself crumble under the weight of the fact that his best friend is _dead_. He thinks of his voice, his face, their time at MIT—he dreams about him, and it’s a different pain on his chest altogether to the one he gets these days. He thinks about Pepper, of course, wonders if she’s worried and what she’s doing; he thinks about Obie and his parents, in a way he hasn’t in a long time—it’s just that his grief and his rage are so encompassing and all-consuming that it’s sometimes really hard to feel anything else at all.

At least he isn’t numb.

The only thing that makes him feel—not better, that isn’t the word, but at least a little bit comforted—, is the fact that for all that he made his best friend’s life really hard sometimes, at least Rhodey knew he was loved. Tony’s always been free with his affections and for all that he’s bad at being constant, he thinks the way he treats the people he likes is really terribly different from the way he treats the people he doesn’t. In the end, for all that he pretends to be someone he isn’t, he finds it really hard to fake anything to Pepper—to Rhodey—, so it’s not that he wishes he had told his friend he loved him _more_ : Rhodey knew him enough to know if not exactly how much, at least that he did.

He wishes instead that he had bought him a bigger house, sent him more stuff when he was deployed (listening to Rhodey’s voice over the phone saying _thanks for the care package_ could turn a bad day into a bearable one, sometimes). He wishes he could listen to Rhodey’s voice again, just one more time (the one on his mind doesn’t do him justice, it isn’t accurate—it’s already fading).

  


After everything, he thinks, the hardest part is leaving Yinsen’s body behind. He kills the terrorists in his wake, _every single one of them_ , and as they fall he feels—lighter. It’s a good feeling, to rid the world of these monsters, to stop them from ever using his weapons again.

Distantly he thinks it would be great if he could control the flight better, just so he could turn around and enjoy the sight of the base falling apart.

He flies, then he falls, then he walks, and it’s only when he hears the rotor sounds of the helicopters that he knows he’s safe.

He’s on his knees—he doesn’t have any strength to stand, anymore—when he sees the shapes of american soldiers running towards him. He doesn’t recognize them, his vision is blurry and he feels like he is about to faint at any moment.

“How was the fun-vee?” a voice asks, and it takes Tony’s tired brain a whole second to realize the implications of what he’s hearing. He blinks, trying to clear his vision, but he can’t quite make Rhodey’s face. No matter. He has the _voice_.

There’s something like a weight being lifted from his shoulders and he feels like crying, like laughing. He thinks he might be doing both. “Next time,” Rhodey says, “you ride with me, ok?” and there are arms surrounding him, comforting him. There are warm tears falling on his shoulder and maybe Rhodey is crying too.

  


They take him to the helicopter, carefully, and Rhodey refuses to leave his side. Tony thinks about saying something—anything—but he can’t quite muster the strength, so he lets himself slump on Rhodey’s shoulder and naps the whole trip—wakes up as Rhodey gently shakes his shoulder.

As soon as they land, Rhodey takes him to the infirmary, though Tony refuses to let the medics get too close. They end up leaving him for Rhodey to patch up and that’s—that’s fine. Tony isn’t really in the mood to deal with anyone else.

“At least this is familiar,” Rhodey says as he dabs something at a cut somewhere on his back. Tony can’t muster the strength to laugh, but he does snort, if only because he was thinking the same thing. How many times had Rhodey ever patched up his hands or his face after an accident in the lab? Too many.

“Do you know what I missed the most?” He asks, half-jokingly. He has a list, on his mind, of things he wants to do as soon as he lands on american soil. He wants to know what Rhodey will answer.

His friend looks up. “Obviously, it was me.” He says and he is joking, too. Tony feels his heart constrict because it’s spot on. He smiles, though, shakes his head. He wonders if it’s cowardice to not confirm it and says, instead:

“You used to know me better, snugglebunny.” He hisses as a particular cut burns, and Rhodey brushes it gently.

“Enlighten, me, then.” He says, his voice slightly apologetic. Tony waggles his eyebrows, in response, and Rhodey can’t see him but after years of friendship he can guess.

He laughs. “Tony,”he says. “Never change.”

“Never,” Tony promises, but thinks, distantly, that it’s too late.

  


Afterwards, once Tony is mostly patched up, Rhodey stands in front of him, critically analyzing his own work. He crosses his arms, then uncrosses them in order to clean something on Tony’s forehead, thumb gently brushing against skin. After he’s satisfied, he smiles. A second passes by and they’re silent, because they might have been friends since forever but they’ve never been on this situation before and they’re both a little wrong-footed, they’re both a little unsure.

Rhodey crouches, so he looks Tony in the eye, and his hands grip Tony’s shoulder. There’s something on his face that Tony can’t quite figure out and he doesn’t try to, because it doesn’t matter and Rhodey’s pressing his chapped lips against Tony’s.

He says: “I missed you too, asshole,” and Tony… Tony wonders.


	4. i was made to keep your body warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's dark, until it isn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I entered a marvel creators discord server and it made me weirdly productive. This, here, is the direct consequence of a bunch of sprints. Yes! I might even finish this fic this month, which I didn't think I would. Whoop.

“Jarvis, turn on the lights,” he asks. His voice trembles, but he ignores that. Instead, he touches the wall, slides his fingers as he walks. It’s cold. “Jarvis, _all_ of them. I want, I want all of them. Bright. Brighter.”

Tony doesn’t want to sit alone in the dark. He would, under normal circumstances, as he’s done several times in the past, wallowing and wondering and thinking of what’s just happened, a glass of scotch in hands, but he’s seen it up close—the _darkness_ —and he just… he doesn’t want to remember what it felt like to fall back down, weightless, as he was sure what he was seeing was going to be his last vision, Jarvis the last voice he heard.

He sits on the floor, head against the wall, face turned towards the light—eyes closed and legs bouncing with pent up energy. He can’t stop replaying the scene in his mind and his eyelids tremble with the effort he makes to keeps his eyes closed. It’s how Rhodey finds him, hours later, mind working fast and fighting the tears as hard as he can.

“You know, I didn’t sign up for this,” Rhodey says, voice surprisingly soft. Tony opens his eyes to look at him, watches how the fluorescent lights make his skin different. Rhodey sits down besides Tony, lays his head on Tony’s shoulder, a hand on his knee. “You’re the civilian. I shouldn’t be the one receiving calls that you almost died.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony says. Rhodey shakes his head, and Tony knows mostly because he feels the movement.  He’s still looking at the spot Rhodey was previously occupying.

“I’m not,” Rhodey answers.

Tony turns his head to look at him. His friend gives him a soft smile, doesn’t say anything else for a full minute. They breath together and it’s—it’s calming, Tony doesn’t feel like he’s trembling anymore.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Rhodey breaks the silence. “The last thing I want is seeing you hurt. But at the same time, Tones, I…” he sighs. “I understand. Why you do this. And I wouldn’t want you to stop. You wouldn’t be you if you stopped.”

Rhodey’s hand wraps around Tony’s and he squeezes it. Tony turns his hand, palm up, and slides his fingers between Rhodey’s. Rhodey’s hand is warm, he notices. His heart is starting to beat faster, now, and his palms starting to sweat but for once he doesn’t really care about what that means. He needs this. He really, really needs this.

“You say the sweetest things, platypus,” Tony jokes, but it sounds weak to his own ears, too much honesty bleeding through. Rhodey laughs, though, and that makes it ok. “It is why I love you.”

Another minute goes by before Rhoey gets up, so very slowly, and uses the hand he’s been holding to pull Tony towards him. “Up you come.”

Tony goes, if only because he’s not in the mood to pull Rhodey back down. He could, he knows, and they’d mock fight and have fun. Rhodey would let him win, because he’s a good friend, and he would feel better. He doesn’t want to have fun. He doesn’t really want to feel better. Instead, he’s lets himself be pulled to his feet and then pulled along the corridors, Rhodey pointedly not commenting on the fact that every single light they walk past are lit. Tony knows he’s noticed it—he just doesn’t care.

They end up on Tony’s room. The bed is unmade, still, and he gets that weirdly familiar feeling of coming back to a place of normalcy after everything’s changed—that feeling of remembering what was like to be the person who woke up on that bed and _knowing_ it isn’t the person he is, not anymore.

The way Rhodey pulls him towards the bed is really familiar, too, but it’s a good kind of familiar, a kind of familiar that dredges up good memories and makes him want to smile. He nearly does. Nearly.

“I’m not going to fall asleep,” Tony says, even as he lays down beside Rhodey. They’re still holding hands, he notices suddenly, but it seems neither of them is willing to let go quite yet. Tony looks at his friend’s face, then at the big window that shows the night sky—the shape of the city. It’s the same view he’s had every night, except that there are signs of the fight everywhere: broken windows and buildings cut in half, huge chunks of concrete on the floor. The cleaning up will take a while, he knows.

He should, perhaps, help with it. Money, he has money. Suddenly he wants to get up and do something, call someone, be useful. He’s about to, but then Rhodey says: “I don’t think I will, either,” and he turns to look at his friend, city forgotten.

Silence engulfs them again. Hours pass, the sky slowly changing its colors, and Tony watches Rhodey’s face until Rhodey falls asleep. It’s peaceful, and eventually, somehow, Tony doesn’t feel like vibrating out of his skin anymore. Once the sun rises, it even feels a bit silly, the lights inside still all lit.

He feels sluggish, like he could sleep if he closed his eyes, but he really doesn’t want to sleep—to dream. He makes to get up, instead, thinking of getting some coffee, and only then realizes that yes, they _still_ haven’t let go of each other’s hands and at some point during the night, Rhodey moved their hands and now they rest against his heart.

Tony looks at him, the glimmer of his skin under the sunlight, and he looks so much more handsome than he did under the fluorescent lights. Not only does he look—calm, the lines of his face all smoothed out, but there’s something about the sunshine that turns this scene into something out of a movie, a poem, a song.

There’s something like longing, down on his stomach, and that is familiar too. He slides his free hand through Rhodey’s hair, pets him, takes a deep breath.

“Thanks for keeping me company, sugarplum,” he says at his friend’s sleeping form. Predictably, there’s no answer. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

He bends, then, slowly, carefully, and presses his lips against Rhodey’s forehead. Rhodey opens his eye, then, something like softness in his eyes, and Tony doesn’t really know what else to say. What he needs to say, or if he actually needs to.

That’s ok, though, because Rhodey does: “Coffee?”

Tony nods.


	5. kiss me like you wanna be loved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those were never friend kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, fucking up my plans for the next chapter so i could write fluff on this one? more likely than you think
> 
> i started this chapter a long while ago, before captain marvel was A Thing, but the beginning sucked so I never finished it. and then i reworked the beginning, and it got better, but my original idea didn't make sense anymore so i wrote this instead. 
> 
> (watch me change the fic summary because i like a sentence i wrote this chapter)
> 
> it's like 2am here so i'll revise this later. probably.

“It’s nice that you’ll be able to go public with your relationship, now,” Bruce says. The two of them are sitting together on Tony’s very comfortable living room after a satisfying afternoon at the workshop, not-quite-watching a movie. Rhodey is with them, a rare moment of respite from the military, arms spread and legs crossed, comfortable in a way he isn’t anywhere else.

They’d been talking about the fact that every other gay movie ends with a tragedy, then moved on to related topics. Bruce’s just referring to the fact that DADT has recently been repealed, and although intellectually Tony understands that his and Rhodey’s relationship can (and often is) interpreted that way, it’s striking that people keep doing it.

It’s particularly striking that Bruce did it, that Bruce _does_ it, because they’ve been kind of friends—in the way you can be friends with such a skittish guy—for a while, and people who are close to him usually realize that Tony’s feelings are unrequited very quickly.

Tony’s a good actor, has always been able to pretend to be something he isn’t, really, but his feelings for Rhodey have this tendency to bleed through.

Some things you can’t fake.

Some things, you aren’t willing to.

And pretending not to love Rhodey the way he does takes too much effort, effort he could be applying somewhere else, effort he could be using to build a machine that will help protect humanity, or something that will give people clean, affordable energy.

Effort that could change the world.

“Me and Rhodey, we’re not together. Not like that.” Tony denies, words coming out almost bored. He’s said these words many times, is the thing. So he shrugs, because there is nothing else he can do. “Rhodey’s as straight as it comes.”

Three things Tony knows: The Earth is round. The sky is blue. James Rhodes is straight. Except,

“The word you’re looking for is demisexual, buddy,” Rhodey says, and reality tilts on its axis. Tony feels like Copernicus, finding out the earth goes around the sun. He feels like Archimedes, sitting down at his bath and watching the water level rise. He feels like Newton, figuring out gravity because an apple has just hit him in the head and he can’t deny it anymore.

He can't deny it anymore.

What a terrifying prospect.

“Sharon,” Tony raises one finger. The name comes out jumbled, fast, careless. “Claire. Carol,” he raises two others. “All girls, honeybear. You never, ever hinted anything about liking a guy. That’s still being straight.”

Rhodey hums, amused. Bruce is smiling at them, soft and knowing, and Tony feels like he’s missing something. He never likes missing anything, has never learned how to deal with feeling dumb, but right now specifically it’s terrible feeling.

His heart is beating fast.

He feels like throwing up.

Something has fundamentally changed and the world is not the same.

“Rhodey,” he says. His voice comes out strangled, breathless. He tries to come up with words to ask a question, but his brain is frozen. He doesn’t know what to say. So he doesn’t say anything, and he hopes Rhodey comes to his rescue like he does—like he _always_ does.

“There has never been anyone.” There’s the sound of a door closing softly behind them—Bruce’s spot in the couch is now vacant—but Tony notices that with an almost detached disinterest. His attention is on Rhodey, the way his lips are moving, the cadence of his voice, his lashes touching the underside of his eyes as he blinks. “Well, that’s a lie. There has been one person.”

Rhodey raises one finger, mimicking the way Tony still has three fingers raised. Tony looks at his own hand, lowers his fingers almost ashamed, and doesn’t quite notice that Rhodey is approaching him until he's very close.

“Tones,” he says. That, and nothing else. His one finger goes from counting to pointing at him, and Tony frowns. He knows what Rhodey’s saying, but it doesn’t make any sense.

“We kissed that one time,” Tony starts saying.

“We kissed many times,” Rhodey interrupts him. “You’ll have to be specific.”

“Those were friend kisses,” Tony dismisses them, hand in the air. “No, I mean that time. When we were in college. We kissed that one time and you said—you said you were straight. I remember that. You said you were straight and you broke my heart.”

Rhodey’s hand comes up to rest on Tony’s cheek. His fingers are calloused, but his touch is feather-light, soft. He’s craddling Tony’s face as if he was holding something precious, and it’s too much, too much, _too much_. Tony feels like his heart is going to burst at any moment, so he looks away.

“For someone who claims to be a genius,” Rhodey says. There’s an emotion to his voice Tony can quite recognize, and he doesn’t try to. “You can be very dense sometimes.”

“I’m not-” he starts again, but Rhodey craddles his face with both his hands and interrupts him with a kiss. Just a peck. There and gone.

“Is this a friend kiss?” Rhodey’s hold on his face is bolder, now. Tony can’t look away, and looking at Rhodey’s lips isn’t safe; he has no choice but to look him in the eyes.

That isn't safe, either.

But Tony nods. “Yeah, yes,” he sighs. Rhodey has big, dark brown eyes which look lighter in the sun.

“Darling.” Rhodey says. He lets out a light chuckle at Tony's amazed face (Rhodey has never called him _darling_ before). Tony opens his mouth—there are words on his throat clawing their way out, he can _feel_ them—, but before he can say anything, Rhodey repeats: “Darling. They were never friend kisses.”

“Marry me,” the words escape Tony’s mouth before he can rein them in. They burn. But they're said, and once they’re out, Tony realizes he didn’t want to rein them in—he didn’t need to.

Rhodey was never going to say no.

Rhodey doesn't say no.

He just... smiles. "Of course."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have no idea what to do for the last chapter, now. i'll get to it eventually, i guess.


End file.
